I was thinking that one way to increase the amount of food we sell would be to have eating friendly events in the early evening (6ish to 9ish) slot. I know this wouldn't always be possible or desirable. But it could be a rule of thumb that we do what we can to not put people off from having dinner.

Maybe we do this already and I've just seen a few unavoidable and worthy exceptions. And perhaps most people here work hard to make the Forest the sort of place that their parents don't want to come to. But it is people like our parents who buy food in cafes. And we can't afford to entirely alienate this demographic.

I think in principle I need to disagree. Trying to move our focus to prioritising the forest-as-cafe over the forest-as-events/arts space is exactly the antithesis of what we should be doing. If painting your genitals with UV paint and running around to KLF may alienate a customer, then that is a customer we should be proud to sacrifice.

However, if you mean less bongo drums in these hours then that would be nice.

"We all tend to idealise kindness and tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves infested with losers and nutcases." Sebastian Horsley

Our falling turnover in kitchen may due to the global economy melt down , the has been hemoraging money too . what should be the most attractive element of the forest should be it arts and events , this is something in relation to other cafe we have and they dont . this makes us interesting and an amazing place to be .

A while ago Nial complained about some loud music that was on early in the evening. The general consensus, which I agreed with, was that you have to expect the unexpected, and take the loud with the quiet.

Maybe I've changed my mind, or maybe the situation is different. The events which attract people are events which make eating difficult, or they attract people who don't eat. And the people who don't eat put off the people who do want to eat, as to events which make eating difficult.

I'm not saying that we need to show The Guns of Navarone every afternoon, and have an acoustic set from Sting in the evening. I want the Forest as arts/events space to continue too. I think that in order for it to continue, it has to be managed better so that it doesn't kill the golden goose.

What is the point of running around to the KLF with a dayglo dong if there isn't some bourgeois money spending parental type around to disapprove? The current crop of crusty customers aren't even going to look up from their water. I'd be proud to sacrifice customers after they have had a good meal and were going to come back next week to be sacrificed again.

point: we need to get a balance on our clientelle. There's a lot less people eating lunch here and a lot more hanging out with feet on tables. I think everyone needs to be a bit more realistic when it comes to some commercial realities. Seats = Money. If people are in a seat they are taking the potential away from us to earn money. If they leave their rucksack on a seat and their trainers on the couch and their books on the table and don't tidy up their table they are taking away our money by preventing others. By being gross, dodgy and smelly and sitting in our seats they are taking up the potential of earned income. There is no quick cure for this since the damage seems to have been done - 3 months or 4 months ago people would come in and see there were no seats and leave. Now, they probably aren't comming in the first place and the people we are left with are not here to buy stuff but to abuse the free shop and get free internet. We need to pay close attention to who has been here all day and not bought anything. We need to watch the sleepers and the hop heads. We need to not shut the kitchen. Volunteers at night should not be shutting the kitchen.

I'm not sure how any of this will help but i think it might. Cleaning up the cafe has been a major improvement - getting more strong art and connecting it more with people outside the collective will also help a lot.